Will J

Review of Mackenzie Health

If you are going here to have your baby, I strongl...

If you are going here to have your baby, I strongly encourage you to look elsewhere. The hospital staff, save for maybe 2 or 3 at the most, are indifferent at best to you.

Dr. Koshbakht (our OB), Sue Mason (hearing test), and Brittany and Katie (lactation consultants) are the exceptions that I think should be recognized more for their expertise and efforts. This is where the praises end.

The RN's said some insensitive comments to my wife without realizing during our stay, mostly due to the fact that--and this in no way is meant to be racial--their command of the English language is not at the level you'd want your health professional explaining important medical information.

One conversation example:

RN: are you going to working?
wife: I'm on mat leave now for a year.
RN: no, you are working now?
wife: no, I'm on mat leave.
RN: no working in the room.
wife: what? OHHHH am I WALKING around in the room? no.

We had a private room and not once did any staff knock before entering other than the food staff. Oh, and the private room was dank and dark like it was a minimum security prison (trust me, I've seen them). The washroom had no ventilation, so smells would linger for a while after #2's.

One RN accidentally spilled in the bathroom floor urine collected from my wife's catheder. She said she'd call staff to clean it up. Almost 2 hours later, no one came. I had to ask hospital cleaning staff if they could come help clean it up, and all they did was take a wet mop to it. You could still smell the urine.

My wife needed approval from her OB to be discharged. The RN said she'd call the OB to get that, and from the looks of things, we would be allowed to leave soon. Fifteen minutes later I happen to call the OB to make a follow up appointment for my wife. I asked about our OB talking to the RN, but I was told the RN had not called yet. The OB said she'd call the hospital back to talk to the RN herself so that we could leave soon. I gave the RN the benefit of the doubt that she had to finish her rounds before making the call to our OB. An hour and a half, we still didn't get any confirmation that we could leave. I sought out the RN, and she says she JUST got off the phone with our OB and got the OK to discharge us. What a liar. This same nurse checked that our baby was in our car seat correctly before going home. She actually said that I did a good job, and things looked right. Later when I was just perusing through the car seat manual, I realized that the leg straps were the wrong side of the legs on our drive home from the hospital.

I also was interested in buying a breast pump from the Postpartum unit. It was around 5 pm when I asked our RN if I could buy one there, or I needed to go to the gift shop (I was told they were sold there at the breat feeding clinic early on). She said that the lactation consultant is the one who could sell it to us and that I should have bought it from here before 4:30 pm. No one had told us that stipulation, but the RN made it sound like I was stupid for not knowing that. At the same time she seemed really eager to sell me the breast pump and said she'd look into finding someone who could bring the the pump and charge me to the credit card they had on file for our private room. Another half hour passed while trying to get discharged so I told her not to bother.

On our way out, I went to the gift shop and I asked, "Excuse me, do you sell breast pumps?" The lady replied, "You want to renting breast pump?" I said, "No, I would like to BUY one. Do you sell them here for purchase?" "No, not sell them here," she replied. Then another person who overheard says, "Are you looking to buy a breast pump? We have them here to sell."

I would need another hour to finish writing all the unhappy experiences but I need to tend to my recovering wife and pooping baby.